Amortentia
by ExceedinglyPeculiarChick
Summary: What do our beloved characters smell when confronted with a cauldron of this powerful love potion? Unfortunately, it's not Number Nine. Rated T for a bit of language.


Amortentia

For Harry it was always the same scent: that flowery, delicate aroma that seemed to penetrate to the very core of the fears and doubts he had and lift them away, leaving only a pleasant calm in its wake. It simply embodied Ginny, down to her lilting, melodious voice and soft waves of fiery hair that shone under any sort of light. When that smell reached him… well, he didn't know how to describe it, really—a warmth that glowed brighter than the sun seemed to ignite in his chest and light the way for an otherwise-troubled soul.

—•—

Ginny, on the other hand, smelled a plethora of different things: mint and wood smoke, broom polish, the scent of the air just after a rainstorm, a hot summer breeze blowing through her open window as she stole a kiss in the smallest bedroom on the day of her brother's wedding; underneath was the indescribable, steady, ever-present and comforting smell of Harry. Her Harry. Fierce and noble and sometimes overprotective, whose emerald eyes seemed to see right through her, without whose arms securely wrapped around her she was unable to sleep at night, who understood better than anyone the nightmares she had every night—and who loved her above all else.

And truly, that was all that mattered.

—•—

Hermione knew she had started to ramble that day in Professor Slughorn's Potions class about what she could smell in Amortentia; new parchment and freshly cut grass were indeed present in the silvery sheen of the potion's fumes. But she had left out a few choice items, like the scent of the Gryffindor common room after a Quidditch victory—adrenaline, Butterbeer snuck up from the kitchens, the jumbled aromas of thirty or so girls crammed into an enclosed space and each wearing a different perfume—and the standard lavatory shampoo that all Hogwarts dormitories were equipped with, dozens of bottles of which were lined up along Ron's counter in the bathroom, pilfered from six years' worth of showers at Hogwarts. All because she had made a passing comment to Ron about how, strangely enough, she liked the scent.

But with Ron using it on a daily basis? She thought the relationship with the smell had progressed somewhat toward "love".

—•—

Ron thought he should probably hate that frilly little perfume of Hermione's. After all, wasn't it what had led to their capture and imprisonment in the basement of a house—or more accurately, manor—with sodding Bellatrix Lestrange torturing his girlfriend upstairs? But now that everything was finally behind them—hard to say, really; being Harry Potter's best mate was fucking exhausting—he found himself with an odd attachment to that perfume. It sort of smelled like… well, almost like the sunshine on the meadow of wildflowers that he and Hermione shared as their secret place, combined with the crisp scents of cold wintry air. Bit of an odd combination, really—then again, so were he and the woman who he hoped would soon be Mrs. Weasley.

—•—

Fleur had always loved the sea, ever since she was a little girl. She had insisted when she married Bill that they move somewhere where she could hear the ocean all the time; Bill, in his usual easygoing manner, had simply chuckled and acquiesced. When they'd moved into Shell Cottage after that—well, after that disaster of a wedding, the only thing that could comfort her was the scent of the sea breeze blowing through her open windows, smelling of salt and wilderness and untamed adventures. Just like her Bill.

—•—

Bill was not by any means or standards an ordinary man. He worked as a curse breaker for a bank with some of the trickiest beings known to wizardkind, had been attacked by a werewolf and lived to tell the tale with nothing but a couple of scars, was the eldest of seven children, and had married a highly spirited French Triwizard champion. "Ordinary" was not something that came up often in Bill's vocabulary. Thankfully, it didn't in Fleur's, either. During some boring spots at work, he often found himself drifting over memories from the Hogwarts years—specifically the Potions lesson where Amortentia had come up. And true to character, Bill had smelled something highly unusual: French cooking, neatly starched linens, warm tea. All the things, in short, that he enjoyed on a daily basis with Fleur.

No, Bill wasn't ordinary, but he didn't have it bad, either.

—•—

A/N: The idea for this fic popped into my head and wouldn't leave, so I had to get out of bed and write the little thing down. In my defense, it is four in the freaking morning as I write, and so publishing a fic about the things people smell in a love potion seems perfectly plausible to my writer's brain at the moment.

I will be accepting suggestions on this fic, so leave a review telling me what characters you'd like to see me do next! If you have any ideas for what any specific character might smell, jot that down too and I will credit you for your suggestions. Thanks, lovelies! :)

EPC (Don't you guys think it's time to start calling me "Emma"? I mean, I put it in my profile for a reason!) 


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